


Ending War

by dogmatix



Series: Tabula Rasa [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Death, F/M, GFY, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Order 66, but yeah, not everything is fixed, some things are still bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-14 18:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7185185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogmatix/pseuds/dogmatix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The battle on Utapau ends, then things go sideways.  Cody is determined to try and put things right, even if he has to travel to the ends of the galaxy to catch up to Obi-Wan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Huge HUGE contributions and cheerleading from norcumi and flamethrower. They are made of awesome.
> 
> 90% unbeta'd, so all mistakes my own.

Order 66 hits like a sledgehammer, covers everything in a static haze of _good soldiers follow orders_. Cody is looking at the waterlogged brown robe worn by the JediTraitor before he realizes why that’s _wrong_. 

He goes through the motions, keeps up the pretense. They only found the robe. He hangs onto that fact with grim hope, clutches it close. He’s seen JediTrait-  _Obi-Wan_ escape impossible odds before.

Cody refuses to give in to despair, even when it seems he’s forever too late, just a step behind. He reasons that Obi-Wan would return to the Jedi Temple, but all Cody finds there is the bodies of 501st brothers scattered liberally around huddled Jedi corpses.

Cody goes to a friend and contact Obi-Wan introduced him to, in the most suspect diner on all of Coruscant. When the waitress delivers his food and puts a vibroblade to his side, demanding to know his purpose in Senator Amidala’s fiercest tone, he actually relaxes back into his seat. It takes him way too damn long to convince her of his purpose, but they both know something about being close to the wrong man. She sends him after Obi-Wan, who’s chasing after Skywalker, all the way to Mustafar.

On the way there, he hears the reports of victory, of an attempted Jedi coup, of the founding of an Empire, but he pays none of it any mind. He cannot afford to be distracted from his goal.

Order 66 is weaker than his own will, but also faster, which means that Cody can fight back the urge to kill, but maybe not before he’s gotten off a shot.  Cody’s not willing to give Order 66 that kind of chance at Obi-Wan, so when he disembarks on Mustafar, the blaster stays in the shuttle.

Cody searches for his General; first in the buildings, where he finds only dead Separatists, then outside.  He finds Obi-Wan sitting on the searing hot rocks along a river of molten lava.  The Jedi is rocking back and forth, holding the headless body of- oh. Oh gods of space. General Skywalker.

Cody isn’t sure how long he stands there, Mustafar’s air burning his lungs, as Obi-Wan gently rocks the body of a man he loved as a brother. A man Cody knows for a fact that Obi-Wan would have died for in a heartbeat. Cody staggers a step closer, then has to stop.   Skywalker’s head has been placed in the corpse’s lap, gathering all the parts together.

He finally makes himself move, and sits down beside Obi-Wan.  Skywalker’s cauterized neck is close enough to touch, but Cody forces himself to focus only on Obi-Wan.

The Jedi’s eyes are red and puffy. Dried tear-tracks and crusted snot show evidence of the kind of emotional storm that Cody would not have believed his General could succumb to.

Before Cody can find words, Obi-Wan leans into him, hiding his face in the crook of Cody’s neck. “I just want to _stop_ ,” Obi-Wan says, his voice scratchy and so damn tired that Cody aches for him.

Taking a moment to sit on Order 66 so that he doesn’t strangle his General by accident, Cody hugs Obi-Wan. “Then we’ll stop.”

Cody never even heard Palpatine coming.


	2. Chapter 2

All Cody can hear is the high-pitched whine ringing in his ears. Pain radiates from his torso and his thoughts feel sluggish.  He lies there, confused and in pain and blistering all along one side, not moving.  It takes him a stunned minute to understand what’s happened.

Wheezing, he pushes away from the rock that saved his life.  A Force-push. That had been a Force-push.  If not for the rock  he’d slammed into, he’d have gone straight into the molten lava.  He staggers upright, sick dread pooling in his stomach. Dooku was dead. Ventress was gone. Even Skywalker’s corpse lay sprawled not four meters from Cody, slowly roasting on the searing rocks.

He’d heard Obi-Wan speak of a ‘Sith Master’ once or twice. Someone even more powerful than Dooku. Cody has the sinking feeling he’d just met and almost been killed by them.

It’s hard to track anyone on the hard rocky ground, but Cody managed to catch glimpses of movement and stumbles after Obi-Wan’s captor as best he could, still fighting to get his breath back.  It’s not the Separatist facility they head towards, but some kind of building – a lab or prison complex, maybe – dug into Mustafar’s thin crust. 

Cody has no plan of action when he sneaks into the place.  Obi-Wan would roll his eyes at Cody and give him that longsuffering look. Skywalker would be proud of him.

Cody flashes back on a headless corpse cradled in his grieving lover’s arms, and has to stop and just. Breathe.

He goes down one or two dead ends, but at last he manages to find where the Sith has holed up. Human. Male.  With the Sith under the voluminous black robes, that’s all Cody can tentatively conclude. The Sith has his back turned to Cody’s direction, and is busy adjusting….something, on a control panel. Claw-like hands fly over the buttons and dials as the Sith rails to himself.

“-how much _time_ I put into that whiny little bastard? And you don’t even have the _decency_ to gloat over killing him.”

Cody ghosts over the floor, heart in his throat as he nears Obi-Wan. His General is only half conscious, his head lolling first to one side, then the other. Strapped down on some kind of padded chair, that’s all the movement afforded to him. A circlet of black and silver is clamped tight around Obi-Wan’s head, and a slab of metal at the head of the chair hums ominously.

If Cody can reach Obi-Wan, untie him-

“But you’ll make it up to me yet, _Jedi_ ,” the Sith snarls, hand slapping down on something that activates whatever infernal machine Obi-Wan is strapped to.

Obi-Wan’s head snaps back _,_ his eyes rolling back in his head as he jerks unthinkingly against his restraints, mouth open in a silent scream.

“And _you_ ,” the Sith rounds on Cody.  Palpatine. It’s Chancellor Palpatine.  “Execute Order Zero.”

Cody’s world grinds to a halt. He’s standing at rest, Back straight, feet together, arms hanging limply at his sides.  Order Zero.  He’s been ordered to stand down.

He knows he needs to move, or the Sith – _Chancellor Palpatine_ – will kill him, but it’s so hard to fight the lassitude.

“Miserable failure. I will make you _suffer_.” Palpatine’s dessicated lips skin back from yellowed teeth. “You will _beg_ me for death.”

Inside his head, Cody rails at himself, fights to throw off Order Zero, and knows that he will be forever too late.

Cody’s never been so glad to hear a lightsaber ignite in his entire life.  He’d cry if he could.  Yoda stands in the doorway, determination in every line of the old Jedi’s frame.

“Evade me here, you will not.”

Palpatine throws out a mocking reply, but Cody’s stopped paying attention to the fight unfolding in front of him. Throwing his will against the stand-down order, he curls his hands into fists, slowly bending his knees until he collapses forward and instinct kicks in, his hands coming up to break his fall.

Duty screams at him to help General Yoda, but he has no weapon, can only be a liability if Palpatine issues Order 66 again, and Obi-Wan is _still_ strapped to the chair, dying by inches, or worse.

Cody has no idea what pulling Obi-Wan from the chair will do to the Jedi, but he knows that Obi-Wan would not want to be left in it, whatever the outcome.  Cody rips the metal circlet off Obi-Wan’s head and starts yanking the restraints open.  

Obi-Wan had gone limp the moment the circlet left his head.  Cody hauls the dead weight of his General over his shoulder and forces aching legs to move. The best thing – the only thing – he can do now, is to save his General.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just for clarity, since it doesn't come up in the fic - Yoda didn't fight Sidious in the Senate, here, since SIdious left earlier. Yoda followed him to Mustafar, and this is their first fight.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops, okay so there's one more chapter after this.

When news about the ‘aggression inhibitor’ chip had first broken, Cody’s initial reaction had been disbelief. Then outrage. Then numb horror.  Was he really some half-crazed killer under it all, he’d wondered?  Did he need some damn leash to make him heel?  Would he turn on his brothers and his General – his lover – without it? 

Oh, the irony.  Hopeless fury burns in Cody, intertwining hellishly with the guilt and grief.  He bites back a scream.

Obi-Wan lies unconscious on the shuttle’s small bed. It’s been a full rotation and there’s no sign of the Jedi waking up.  The locker holds Cody’s blaster.  Cody’s found himself punching in the combination twice with only vague memories of how he got there.  Order 66 hasn’t been countermanded.

 The ‘aggression inhibitor’ chips are nothing of the karking sort, and Cody can’t wait any longer. He needs his out, _now_.

Easier said than done.  They’re en route to Kamino, but forcing someone to take the karking chip out is going to be difficult if Cody has to be unconscious for the procedure.  He spends the rest of the trip planning and worrying.

Kamino is, if not in chaos, then at least severely distracted, when Cody arrives.  He slips into atmosphere without more than a perfunctory, distracted hail.  From there, it’s a simple matter to sneak into a cloning facility. He’s quite literally one more face in the milling hive of clones coming and going.  He eavesdrops shamelessly; the more he overhears, the more he wonders if he’s not dreaming.  Shaak Ti’s funeral had been held last week, a day after Order 66 had gone out, and clones are being de-chipped as fast as the Kaminoans can line them up.

Cody is too stunned to laugh.  It’s ridiculous. The Kaminoans don’t want to be part of the Empire. Therefore, they can’t afford to have their main defense – the clones – at the beck and call of Palpatine whenever the bastard crooks his finger.

All Cody has to do is get in line. Less than a day later, his chip is gone.

Sneaking out is almost easier than sneaking in. It’s the kind of good luck that makes him paranoid; in his experience, it means that the bad luck is ganging up and waiting for him around the next corner.  He distracts himself by planning their destination.  Predominantly Human-populated, if possible, so that they don’t stand out.  Somewhere out of the way, not close to a hyperspace lane, but with some travel. Not too poor, not too rich. Not someplace they’ve been before.

Obi-Wan isn’t waking up. It’s been four whole rotations since they left Kamino, and the only indication that Obi-Wan is alive is that he’s breathing.  Cody had hooked him up to an intravenous drip on the second day out of Mustafar, to keep him hydrated, and it’s turning out to be a very necessary thing.

Cody tries not to think about it, but the universe is easily cruel enough to do this. To make Cody safe to be around again, only to remove the person he wants to be safe-to-be-around _for_.

On the fifth day, Obi-Wan’s eyes blink open. The relief is enough stagger Cody. Obi-Wan is asleep again almost instantly, but he’d been awake. He’d been _awake_.

Obi-Wan wakes intermittently from then on, but never for very long. Cody talks to him when he’s conscious, and sometimes Obi-Wan gets a pained look and turns his face away.  Cody learns not to speak of the past.

Cody digs up some novels he’d tucked away in his vambrace’s data-storage, traded from brother to brother to pass the long hours of ‘hurry up and wait’ that was part of every soldier’s life.

He reads to Obi-Wan, feeling a bit silly.  It’s worth it, when he looks up to see sleepy blue eyes focused on him.  Cody grins so wide it hurts. Obi-Wan studies him and opens his mouth.

“Who are you?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Random change in verb tense, because apparently that's the way I roll *facepalm*
> 
> Completely unbeta'd, so all mistakes very much mine.

He woke up slowly.  The lights were turned down to just a dim glow, and the room was silent, without even the hum of the hyperdrive.  Oh.  Right. They we were on a planet now.

His memories – what there were of them – were muddled and fragmented. He looked down at the dark-haired man asleep at his bedside, head pillowed on his own shoulder, with the arm slung half over….Ben. That’s right, the man had named him ‘Ben.’

And the man’s name was ‘Cody.’

Ben knew he’d asked both their names at least a few times each, possibly more. Sometimes he remembered, sometimes he didn’t. It was unnerving, not knowing what he didn’t remember, and that wasn’t even counting the giant blank wall between Ben and whoever he’d been before waking up with Cody.

Ben really hoped his memory was…stabilizing, or fixing itself, or healing.  He knew what to avoid thinking about, too.  He knew ‘Ben’ wasn’t his real name, but Cody had tried to tell him his old name, and after that all he remembered was pain. Ben was cut off from his past, and any attempt to delve into it resulted in debilitating migraines.

Ben put a hand over Cody’s broad one that was splayed on Ben’s abdomen, curling his fingers around Cody’s.  A warm contentedness quieted Ben’s fretting.  He wasn’t alone. Whatever had happened to him, whatever he had lost, Cody was with him.

“g’morn’n,” Cody slurred, squeezing Ben’s hand lightly.

“Good morning,” Ben returned. “Where are we? I mean, which planet,” Ben grimaced. “Sorry if I’ve asked that before.”

Cody shook his head slightly, still resting it on his shoulder. “Only once. Your memory’s getting better.”  Gods, Ben hoped so.  “We’re on Zarahng. It’s an out-of-the-way planet on the Outer Rim. It’s a good place to…hide.” Cody’s lips pressed in a thin line. “I’m sorry. I’d tell you more, but…”

“The headaches,” Ben said resignedly.

“Yes.” Cody sat up, keeping ahold of Ben’s hand. “I’ve also been thinking. Would you object to shaving your beard?”

“More hiding?” Ben asked, stroking his beard lightly with his free hand.

Cody nodded. “Maybe nobody would recognize us, but…”

“Better safe than sorry,” Ben said.  Even if he’d lost his memories, he and Cody seemed to be in synch on a lot of things. He took that as a good sign.  “Alright. But first, food?”

Cody chuckled, and Ben felt glad to have made the man smile.  “Sure. Give me a minute.”

They ate a light breakfast of fruit and eggs, with some sort of tea.  By the time they were done, sunlight was seeping into the eastern sky.  It was a quiet morning, with the noise of a town waking up just starting to filter in.

Cody brought shaving gel and a razor, and Ben closed his eyes as the cool gel was applied. It made his stomach flutter to have Cody’s light touch on his cheek, his neck, his jaw. The razor slid smoothly through his beard, removing it and leaving his face feeling cool and naked.

Ben opened eyes he didn’t realize he’d closed. Cody hovered close, and Ben spoke before he knew he meant to. “Can I kiss you?”

Cody’s expression was conflicted. “I-  We shouldn’t. Your memory-  You don’t know who I am.”

“I know _you._ ” Ben said. He could see the want in Cody’s expression, but there was still hesitation. Ben gave a small sigh. “Are we enemies?”

“Never.”

“Are we related?”

“No,” Cody snorted, amused.

“Do you _want_ to kiss me?”

Cody paused. “Dammit,” he muttered, but in defeat, not objection, if Ben was reading him right.

“Then kiss me,” Ben grinned.

It started out soft and chaste, but quickly deepened.  Cody kissed him, Ben thought, like he was coming home.  Ben couldn’t agree more.


End file.
